How Others See Me
What is a criminologist, anyway?
Put away your grin, wiseacre, if you were planing to say, “someone who practices or studies criminology.”
As a member of the American Society of Criminology, the largest and most respected professional organization of criminologists in the world, I receive a subscription to ASC’s newsletter titled The Criminologist. Normally, there’s a feature article with academic-y, ivory tower kinds of ruminations, along with news and happenings in the field, job listings, and teaching tips for the professorial types.
Occasionally, there’s a tantalizing morsel of awesome-sauce.
Buried in the May-June 2012 issue is a worthwhile discussion of what it means to be a criminologist. Miklós Lévay and Henrik Tham, of the European Society of Criminologists, compare the definitions of criminology from our respective organizations.
ESC definition: “The term criminology, as used in this Constitution, refers to all scholarly, scientific and professional knowledge concerning the explanation, prevention, control and treatment of crime and delinquency, offenders and victims, including the measurement and detection of crime, legislation and the practice of criminal law, and law enforcement, judicial, and correctional systems.”
ASC definition: “The American Society of Criminology is an international organization whose members pursue scholarly, scientific and professional knowledge concerning the measurement, etiology, consequences, prevention, control and treatment of crime and delinquency.”
On the whole, Lévay and Tham conclude that we’re largely talking about the same thing from our respective shorelines of the great planetary pond. But they also argue for some differences.
- Americans have a stronger emphasis on criminal justice (think: nuts and bolts of the system)
- Americans have a stronger emphasis on evidence-based criminology
- There is greater attention paid to race and ethnicity in the United States
- Europeans pay more attention to history and structural causes of crime
- Criminologists in Europe play a greater role in policy development
- Europeans are conscious of the East and Central European states, and how criminology and political ideology intersect
There are, of course, many potential avenues for fruitful collaborations between European and American criminologists. These relationships haven’t developed very well over the years, not just because of language and cultural differences, but because crime is so fundamentally different here and there. The American criminal ecology is, when viewed from a global stage, bizarre.
Our best hope for collaboration is through comparative criminology, in which we might, just might, learn a lesson or two about how to fix the madhouse currently known as the American criminal justice system.
Related articles:
- How Others See Me – Criminologist (crimedime.com)
- What is The American Society of Criminology? (socyberty.com)
- Prison Populations are Up and Crime Rates are Down – What’s Up With That? (crimedime.com)
- Criminology (crimeinfocus.wordpress.com)
- The Terrible Price of Mass Incarceration (crimedime.com)
- Social Science is Changing How We View Policing (crimedime.com)
Louise Behiel
May 21, 2012
I’d love to know how crime is different in the US and Europe and Canada. do you have info on that? (Great post by the way and not in the least surprising.)
CrimeCents
May 21, 2012
Hello Louise,
Crime itself is largely similar from place to place, but it can manifest itself differently from one country to another. For example, consider residential burglary. In the US, you have the gun safety paradox. The presence of the gun (in either the offender’s or the victim’s hands) actually makes the situation safer *on the whole* because no one wants to argue with a gun. The paradox is that although guns lead to more safety with a burglary, if the weapon is actually used, the injuries and fatalities are much higher than no gun.
In Britain, residential burglaries are usually carried out with a knife and there are many more injuries because a knife is not a definite weapon like a gun.
That’s one interesting difference.
But the really important differences are not so much about crime itself, but about the structured systems around crime. How we define crimes (marijuana or no?) and, most importantly, how we respond.
Check out this post to get a sense of just how strange US criminal justice policy can become.
http://crimedime.com/2012/04/05/the-terrible-price-of-mass-incarceration/
Louise Behiel
May 21, 2012
will check it out
wordpressreport
May 21, 2012
Reblogged this on WordPress Report.
David Woods
May 21, 2012
Reblogged this on ThinnerBlueLine.
consciousquared
May 21, 2012
You had me at awesome-sauce
CrimeCents
May 21, 2012
Well, that comment is all KINDS of awesome-sauce in and of itself.
Glad you like our sense of humor. We suspect we like yours too.
consciousquared
May 22, 2012
Thanks.
All was quiet in the house until I read that sentence.
Jill of All Trades...Expert of None!
May 21, 2012
Love this blog…thanks for visiting mine!
CrimeDime
May 22, 2012
Thanks for stopping by, Jill of All Trades!
Jill of All Trades...Expert of None!
May 22, 2012
I enjoyed it.
Happy bloggin’ to ya!
deliriousbibliophiliac
May 21, 2012
Do you think this covers all criminology? I am studying criminology in Canada and it seems to be very critical here. We (and the scholars we read) seem to spend more time looking ‘up’ and looking at how the state defines and exacerbates crime and criminogenic environments than examining burglary. Do you think this is a country thing or does it just depend on which area of criminology you fall into?
deliriousbibliophiliac
May 21, 2012
Also, thank you for this blog, it’s great!!
CrimeCents
May 23, 2012
I think it’s really about which program you happen to be in, and even which professors within that program. Over here, at least, it’s the difference between criminal justice and criminology. The criminology people are looking at the structure of the criminal justice system and the state vs. the offender (think Matza’s Leviathan), while criminal justice is more concerned with nuts and bolts. Thanks for stopping by, deliriousbibliophiliac.
Nessa's Notions
May 22, 2012
We definitely need to kill our system of criminal justice, where it appears to victims that the only ones getting any justice are the criminals. I know. We (Americans) disproportionately lock up, execute, keep under surveillance or custody, people of color. And we seem to keep the system running for the benefit of the courts, judges, lawyers, and the host of folks working in “corrections.” We will never change the structural and institutional contributors to the existence of criminals. That would require admitting there is something inherently wrong with our “democracy.” As our criminal justice system has long roots in slavery, I doubt anything about the barbaric ways we deal with crime and criminals will ever change. This is a sad commentary on my country, which continues to claim it is the best country on earth, but I don’t see how this can be so when we will not deal with the consequences of our history.
CrimeCents
May 23, 2012
Agreed, Nessa’s Notions, agreed.
claudiagrant
May 25, 2012
Hi, thanks for visiting one of my posts. I’m studying a Master’s of Criminology in Australia and this will be an interesting blog to follow. So far I would so the Australian approach is on par the European definition listed. So excited there is a criminology blog!
CrimeDime
May 26, 2012
Fantastic. You’ll have to let us know how things are way, way across the pond in Australia. There are probably some interesting comparisons to make.